The Proposition presents, with the cooperation of Fortune Cookie Projects, the work of contemporary Chinese artists Zhou Xiaohu, Dong Wensheng, Wang Qingsong, and Chen Wei.
Zhou Xiaohu (b. 1960) attended Sichuan Academy and honed his computer skills working as a graphic designer after graduating. Interested in the possibilities of technology, his work also retains what he calls a ‘hand-made touch.’ This is most evident in his stop-action films The Gooey Gentleman and Conspiracy, both of which incorporate animation with the human body. Currently a painting instructor at the Changzhou Institute of Technology, Zhou’s work shifts effortlessly from painting to film and back again. As he says, “There are no good or bad differences between media. I feel that some concepts can be expressed more properly, more experimentally by a new medium, such as film.” Zhou’s work has most recently been seen outside China in the traveling exhibition Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection, shown at the Kunstmusem Bern and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2005-2006. In September 2007, his solo exhibition opened at Arndt & Partner, Zurich.
Dong Wensheng (b. 1970), a protégé of Zhou Xiaohu, is a photographer and video artist that takes a deceptively formalist approach to his work. There is a benign superficiality to the highly-finished photographs that belies a certain quirk, a jolt to the eye and the brain.His videos, with their stately pace, lull the viewer with their visual lushness, only to provide a shock at the conclusion. Dong says his work seeks to show the growth and development of an individual within his or her environment.
Wang Qingsong (b. 1966) has been participating in international exhibitions since 1996 and his work was brought before a wider audience with the traveling survey of contemporary Chinese photography and video, Between Past and Future, which opened in New York at the ICP 2004. This milestone exhibition included a number of Wang’s elaborately staged compositions that have since become the hallmark of his oeuvre. While his earlier photographs were digitally-manipulated he has since opted for complex arrangements utilizing a full sound-stage and several actors in elaborate sets. While there is a cinematic quality to these modern day tableaux vivants, the work actually draws upon traditional Chinese history and imagery.
Chen Wei (b. 1980), a graduate of the China Academy, has had his work shown throughout Asia, and most recently contributed a sound piece to the Serpentine Gallery’s China Power Station, Part I, at the Battersea Power Station in London. His photographic work consists of images that have an implied narrative imbued with enigmatic, sinister undertones and the dramas that are portrayed are subtle and not immediate to the eye.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11-6.
The Proposition: www.thepropostion.com
559 West 22nd Street, New York, NY
(212) 242-0035